The pundits preached patience before the season, but what was supposed to take a few seasons took just one: Mel Pearson and his staff have guided Michigan to an NCAA tournament berth in their first season behind the bench. The appearance will be Michigan’s second in the last six seasons.

Northeastern is Pairwise’s highest-ranked three-seed. Northeastern finished the season with 23 wins, including a relatively impressive (based on the rest of the bodybags on their schedule) home-and-home sweep of Boston University in November, a one-off win at Boston College in December, and wins over both schools in February’s Beanpot tournament. They also took Pairiwse no. 7 Providence to overtime in a home-and-home series in January and again in the Hockey East semis.

Northeastern’s powered by an explosive first line, good goaltending, and a high dose of Michigan’s kryptonite. Their top line of Nolan Stevens, Adam Gaudette, and Dylan Sikura put up 41, 59, and 52 points, respectively. Gaudette and Sikura are also both Hobey Baker top-ten finalists. Goaltender Cayden Primeau has a .932 SV%, including a stellar .936 at even strength and .906 when down a man. Northeastern also features the nation’s third-best power play at 27.2%, which is the highest % power play in the tournament fold and the absolute last thing you want to see if you wear a block-M sweater.

Facing Northeastern in the Northeast Regional is a fairly heavy-handed hint at Michigan’s other opponent: geography. Northeastern’s campus is a brisk 52-minute drive from the DCU Center. Should Michigan advance, they would face either one-seed Cornell (Pairwise #3) or four-seed Boston University (Pairwise #15) on Sunday. Boston University’s campus is an even closer drive than Northeastern’s (by two minutes), and they’ve recently found a way to get all their talent on the same page, surging to a Hockey East title by way of victories over Boston College and eventual two-seed Providence. Cornell may have more overall wins, but considering location, top-end talent, recent results, and the all-important PP%, Michigan might rather face Cornell for a shot at the Frozen Four.

Sponsor note. Good to see you got out of jail after punching that police horse. Hope you didn't call Richard Hoeg about that. That would be silly to do, use your one phone call on a small business lawyer instead of a criminal defense attorney. But now that you're out, maybe you've got an idea for a small company that doesn't involve any sort of jail time. Maybe a company that sells extremely lifelike horse statues for punching in the aftermath of Super Bowl wins? Think of the wear and tear saved on horse and man.

Listen, this guy even recorded our practices and broke down our mistakes the following days like it was game-film.

We watched drills! I am not lying when I say he would show us a simple passing drill we did the day before so he could correct guys on their technique. I hadn’t been corrected on my passing technique since I was 10.

It was time-consuming and mentally consuming, but we were definitely better off for this attention to detail. I never felt underprepared for any game, and it was a huge part of any success we had during my college career. Just don’t turn all the lights off during one of those hour-long film sessions, or you’re going to hear snoring coming from those comfortable seats.

Film was always the first thing we turned to when preparing for an opponent. It helped us prepare for all aspects of the next game. We broke down the basic components of their offense and defense, and even a majority of their favorite plays and what they called them.

Overall, we looked deeply at strengths, weaknesses, statistics, and tendencies of each team and player. Then the coaches would combine all of that to set up specific strategies to attack their defense and to halt their players, plays, and overall offensive system.

This would change from game to game depending on who we played. We’d change how we wanted to guard certain screens on and off the ball and other actions away from the ball based on their offensive system and personnel.

We would trap a Talor Battle ball screen until he gave the ball up and then full out deny him to make other players score, but that strategy didn’t happen with Northwestern’s “Princeton offense” under Bill Carmody (one of the most time-consuming scouts we did because of their unique off-ball actions coupled with young players playing major minutes that had never defended them before).

The upshot is: everyone knows what Beilein is trying to do already and it doesn't matter. He does not explain why taking a Michigan grad transfer immediately makes the team in question a thousand times better, though.

Brief hockey bracketology update. Not really enough for its own post, but: Michigan is 10th after this weekend's action. Avoiding a pitfall against Arizona State didn't help much because 1) it was expected and 2) results elsewhere did not go their way. Most notably, Penn State played itself into a two-thirds shot at an at-large with a sweep of Minnesota. Michigan is still 96% in per CHN's Pairwise Predictor, with only a 30% shot of even being on the four line.

Michigan gets Wisconsin this weekend at Yost in a best two-out-of-three series. The worst case scenario featuring a series win (three games and a subsequent loss to OSU) would put them at 12th, give or take some movement around them. It would take a huge number of things going the wrong way to boot them in that case. A three-game series loss is the same situation.

If Michigan gets swept they'll move down to ~14th, which is Danger Zone time. Two stolen bids would boot them, one if someone got hot and moved past them. They'd still be 50/50 to make it; there would be a lot of nervous rooting for favorites in various conference tournaments.

On the more optimistic side of the ledger, Michigan's ceiling is #7. Not that it matters, because here's your regionals setup:

One West regional is in South Dakota. The other is more or less in Philly. You'll love next year's too:

Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and the Pittsburgh area provide about a quarter of college hockey's teams. They get nothing for the next two years. 0/10 sites.

The somewhat good news is that the NCAA has not announced sites in 2020 yet. That's unusual and may indicate that the powers that be are finally moving away from the "how empty can we make this building in the middle of nowhere" era. Home sites, please.

I have a take that was once lukewarm, and is now hot, and should be freezing cold. Michigan’s Maurice Hurst is the best interior defensive line prospect in the 2018 NFL Draft, and it is not close. Vita Vea, Derrick Nnadi, Taven Bryan, Da’Ron Payne and others all offer intriguing traits and characteristics, but none of them can make the consistent high-value impact that Hurst can.

In terms of explosiveness, Bryan is the only other top interior defensive lineman who can rival Hurst, and he isn’t nearly as flexible or nuanced in his rush game after that initial burst. Hurst has the ability to quickly capture a guard’s edge, and then either turn a tight corner to the pocket or get back underneath with a counter.

He's 16 so could be a 2019 or 2020 if he decides on the same route Mo did. Michigan seems like an excellent fit for him if he does:

Franz Wagner ('01) from Alba Berlin is shooting the lights out at #AdidasNGT a bit low release but quick, repeatable and effortless. Grew, body is filling out. Didn't improve much ball skills but still underdeveloped and worse case scenario will be high level shooter w/ pos size

As a bonus, imagine all the "oh no not another one" takes from opposing fanbases.

Random things about Syracuse. I was curious about how Tyus Battle was doing so I clicked over to Kenpom's Syracuse page and found the strangest team in the country. 'Cuse runs nothing but 2-3 zone, of course, and recruits to that model. This explains some of the things. It doesn't explain all of it:

Syracuse has thee of the top ten MPG players in the country. Battle, who has been off the floor for a total of eight minutes since December 2nd, is #1. Frank Howard has missed 32 minutes since that same date. That's a span of 23 games.

Syracuse is the tallest team in the country, has the fewest bench minutes, and gives up the highest A/FGM rate in the country;—74%.

Other stats that are extremely extreme but not quite that extreme: they're 311th in eFG%, 318th at 3s, and 275t hat giving up steals. Opponents chuck threes 44% of the time, which is 332nd. OTOH they have the #2 block rate in the country, the #15 teal rate, the #12 2P% allowed, and the #44 3P% allowed.

This adds up to the #129 offense and #9 defense.

It's a weird team man. FWIW, Battle is keeping his head above water despite a 31% shot rate and 49/31 shooting splits by not turning it over much and hitting a bunch of FTs. M filled his spot with Matthews, more or less.

RUTGERS. A valuable addition to the conference!

Congratulations to Rutgers, who for the first time finish the B1G season with >50% of the win total of the 13th place team. pic.twitter.com/ZpabUe09tc

(Patrick Barron) It might look decently filled in, but the entire upper ring is tarped off

Did you watch any of the NCAA Hockey Tournament last weekend? Maybe. Probably not. Did you attend one of the Regionals? Hahaha. Did anyone? [see above picture] This seems…less than ideal. College hockey is fun! Local arenas and atmospheres are intense and intimidating. Couldn’t this sport tap into this energy and utilize one of the main positives that differentiates collegiate athletics from professional sports? I think so.

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WHO GOES? 16 NCAA hockey teams.

The number of teams should stay the same. Does more than 25% of all of college hockey making the NCAA Tournament seem a little high? Sure, but the numbers work well and one of the repeatedly mentioned goals is to increase the growth and visibility of the sport, in general. So, 16 it is. Continue using the same selection method: Pairwise Rankings and Conference Tournament winners. Avoid conference matchups in the First Round, obviously.

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WHY CHANGE?There are a few well-known issues with the current set-up:

Poor Attendance: A couple Regionals have better attendance than others. Generally, those in the northeast tend to do better because the distance between schools and sites is not as far. Sites with a participating host team also do a little better because there is a rooting interest. However, the random Midwest Regional in an AHL/NHL arena is usually…sparse. I have been to a few of these and it is not entertaining.

No Reward for Dominance: If a team has had a good season and managed to secure a #1 seed, there is no guarantee that their matchup or playoff site is to their advantage. The committee will try to place higher seeds closer to home, but…sometimes, teams are sent to Minneapolis and get paired with Minnesota in the first/second round. Or one of the schools from Boston. That seems like punishment. There have been countless debates about whether it’s better to be in a certain location or be a certain seed. This should never happen! Being a higher seed should always mean receiving a reward!

[Hit THE JUMP for David's elegant solution to the worst postseason in sports]

Caggiula goal, North Dakota

UND 1 UM 0 EV 18:54 Assists: Stecher

Nieves notices Kile skating toward the slot but not the defender nearest him and has the puck knocked away. Stecher recovers the puck he knocked away and taps a pass ahead to Caggiula. From there, it's off to the races through the neutral zone.

Here's how Michigan's defensive zone looks as Caggiula crosses the blue line: one defenseman—Martin—back, and so only one man to beat.

Caggiula takes a fairly harmless shot from the high slot, one which Racine stops easily. The shot itself isn't that dangerous, and the only reason I can see taking it is Caggiula either assumes he can't get around Martin because he's gapped up well or he's assuming he's going to get a rebound; he's right about the rebound.

Martin tries to get a stick out and almost deflects the puck, but it does (barely) clear it. Racine's leaning back but ultimately unable to push up and back before the puck's in the net.

Sensible ideas. From the hockey committee even. USCHO reports that the hockey rules committee is looking at ways to make the infamous TUC cliff in the pairwise less of a cliff and more of a gradation:

“We’re looking to see if there’s a way to reduce the variability that seems to happen as people watch that at the end of the year,” said committee chair Tom Nevala, senior associate athletic director at Notre Dame.

“It’s going to happen a lot early, but by the end of the year it seems like it should be a little bit more cut-and-dried. So we’re going to see if there’s some options there.”

This is a crew that still uses RPI, so don't expect anything too clever. Maybe they'd have a tier in which games count for your TUC record at half-weight, that sort of thing. While that still has cliff issues that turns it into more of a large step than a cliff.

In other news, the committee is going to ask future regional sites not to ask for 90 dollars for three hockey games featuring teams from across the country, which is an insignificant step in the right direction. Tom Nevala, an associate AD at Notre Dame, is still sounding a call for sanity:

“The fans who come and support us all year are in and around our campuses,” Nevala said. “Whether it’s east or west, at least I’m not satisfied looking at the numbers that have generally appeared at regionals.

“Whether we’ve considered some of the eastern regionals well-attended or not, I think you could still do better. And hopefully the ticket pricing and the things that they’re going to attempt to do in the next cycle will help. But I’m convinced that we would be better off on campus in general.”

Unfortunately, this is the last year Nevala is going to be on the committee. At least there's one guy saying the most obvious thing that would help college hockey.

At least it won't die. Some terrible person broke a chunk off Howard's Rock, which Clemson touches before each football game. This is why we can't have nice things.

I just… I mean. People.

Jamarco comin'. Whatever prevented Jamarco Jones from taking his planned weekend swing through his three finalists has been resolved, so he'll be on campus Saturday. This is good for Michigan, which is generally regarded as trailing but in possession of a puncher's chance. Mom's apparently in Michigan's corner, because obviously.

"I talked to Coach Jackson for about 45 minutes, I was in there for a while. He was telling me he's watched around 50 running backs and I'm one of the best he's seen," he said. "That means a lot, because he's been doing this for a while."

Yes, for all possible definitions of "this." FWIW, Patrick held FSU and UF as leaders before trips to OSU and M. He now says he's going to open things up some, but the smart money still has him staying in Florida.

I know a guy who thinks of ghosts. Denard will make you breakfast. He'll make you toast. He don't use butter, he don't use cheese. He uses?

[Eddie] Lacy - who's about to get his first taste of cold weather football as a Green Bay Packer - then asked what Robinson's method was for staying warm "up there in the snow".

"What I did was put vasoline on, a lot of vasoline," Robinson said showing Lacy how he used to coat his arms with the petroleum jelly.

I know a guy who goes to shows. Tim Hardaway Jr has cracked Hated Chad Ford's Big Board, coming in #30. His game does transition neatly to an NBA environment, so there's that. Meanwhile, Ford is muttering about Michael Carter-Williams still, which screams smokescreen to me but hey if Burke slips to the Pistons I get a free pro sports team to care about again.

In many interviews with NCAA officials about enforcement, the topic quickly shifted back to the leadership of Emmert, who is known internally at the NCAA as the "King Of The Press Conference." That's not a compliment.

With high-profile members of the enforcement committee fleeing for individual schools as fast as they can, this is the state of NCAA enforcement.

One ex-enforcement official told SI, "The time is ripe to cheat. There's no policing going on."

"If you force him out, you're essentially telling everyone he has failed," one NCAA president told Sporting News. "When you're dealing with (litigation), it's not prudent to admit failure at the highest office."

Lovely. People in charge of things are just in charge of them, often for no reason.

"I've been watching Fitzgerald Toussaint throughout his whole (leg) rehab and everything," Gardner said Tuesday during an appearance on SiriusXM radio. "He's running faster, he looks way stronger. Fitzgerald Toussaint is going to be our guy.

"The finish we had in the (Outback Bowl loss against South Carolina on Jan. 1) was really beneficial for us even though we lost," Gardner said. "Because you've got a lot of guys that are hungry, almost pissed off, that it ended that way."

Gardner also mentioned the offense will be "more of a pro-style deal" with spread elements to take advantage of his athleticism.

Q: Who does Devin Gardner remind you of?A: He’s not really like anybody I have had. I’ve had so many prototype drop-back passers. He isn’t like (former Auburn quarterback) Jason Campbell, who was athletic but he really wasn’t a runner. I haven’t had a lot of real runners. He’s different. He’s hard to compare to someone else. He’s more like an RG3 type of guy. He’s a little taller than RG3 but plays a lot like him.

He also suggests he wants a 50/50 run/pass split perhaps a little biased towards the run; he, too, mentions Darboh and Chesson first when wide receivers come up (though he later flat-out states Gallon is their #1), then amazingly refers to Dileo and Jackson as "our two slots." Jeremy Jackson, slot receiver, Rich Rodriguez's head explodes.

Etc.: Attempting to explain Kentucky's recruiting (which isn't like fourth as the sites have it since they're out in front, but they will finish top 20, so still). 83% of SEC fans say the average fan has been priced out from attending games.

You've often mentioned how a single elimination hockey tournament is a poor indicator of who the best team is, due to the randomness that exists in hockey. There is one sport where the randomness of the winner is considerably higher - baseball. And college baseball deals with this by making the tournament, and the college world series, double elimination tournament up until the championship.

Do you think a double elimination tournament could work for NCAA hockey, or if not for the frozen four, at least for the regionals? Each regional would still fit nicely into a weekend, rather than needing to spread out over two weeks if it were a 3 game series at each round. As hockey is poised for a potentially cataclysmic change tomorrow, the time for changing the tournament would be now as well.

Sincerely, Vasav

Double elimination doesn't work for hockey because it's just too many games. A first-round loser could hypothetically play five games if they reach the final and win the first game, and how are you going to fit that into three days? Even if you decide the final is one and done (presumably playing this exhausted team is advantage enough) you've still got a situation where someone's playing twice in a day. That's not feasible.

The thing that makes the most sense is to go back to the old best two-of-three series. Have two rounds of those and have a Frozen Four. Downsides: it takes a week longer and some schools don't control their rinks, making reservations awkward. Upside: massively more revenue and it looks like people care about college hockey.

Something like this may be coming. As mentioned this morning, the NCAA has not announced regional sites past next year. Last May this was apparently the hot idea:

Under the most popular proposal, the tournament would stay as a 16-team field, but the first round would be a best-of-three series played at the venue of the higher seed.

The eight teams advancing to the quarterfinals would play at one of two super regional sites. The quarterfinals would be one-game shots with a trip to the Frozen Four on the line. The Frozen Four would not change.

That manages to be only slightly better than the current system since you know you're going to this random "super regional" site to watch your team play once. There seems to be no reason not to play another campus series other than a desire to pretend you're a bigger deal than your are.

If hockey is truly insistent on having regionals, let's format them like the first round of the World Cup or Olympic hockey: everyone plays each other and the top two teams move on. That would force teams to play three straight days but without overtime everyone's on a level playing field. That should help attendance since you know you'll get to see your team play three times.

The biggest issue with that format is scheduling the last day. In the World Cup the last group games are simultaneous because there are situations in which teams can assure themselves advancement by walking around for 90 minutes and tying. You couldn't do that at a regional. I think if you're flexible with the final day's schedule you could avoid that by making the teams who are in that advantageous position play first, though.

More money, more reason to travel, and less randomness—it's better than the current setup. The tournament could start out with groups, have a campus weekend, and then have a Frozen Four.

If NCAA determines that OSU must vacate last year football wins, does that mean RichRod went 1-2 vs. OSU?

No. A vacated game never happened—unless you lost, I guess—so officially he'd be 0-2.

Hi Brian,

After reading your thoughtful post about Webber, I couldn't help but think about why, despite everything, I always loved the guy. Just to try to explain what it was like: The Fab 5 era has many of the elements of the last few years of Michigan football, except they were magnified. First, there was the culture clash. Fisher's coaching style, the new players, all of it received a very similar reception, but unlike RR he had the '89 national championship for protection. And of course the culture clash was magnified because it was not only a matter of a culture clash within the university but on a national level. Think of it as the culture clash times five.

Then there was the electrifying style of play. Every moment of every game at Crisler, you were just sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for something amazing to happen. Not just dunks, although people often forget just how incredible not only Webber but Jimmy's ups were. But an unreal block, an impossible pass, a quick as lightening steal. The only thing I can really compare it to in my life of watching sports was watching Denard last year. You were just sitting there with visceral sense of anticipation, knowing you just might witness something amazing. But now imagine if Denard and Rich Rod had taken us to a national championship game -- or two in a row -- and I think that will give you some sense of how it felt to be a student at Michigan in that era and why we simply can't not love those guys. We all knew those players personalities, their faces, their styles of play. It was something close to watching five Denards.

dh

There was obviously a culture clash with Rodriguez's program as a whole but Denard isn't a part of that because Denard is the nicest kid in the history of the universe. I've been going to basketball and hockey games for years and when other athletes show up, they do so in a big group, come late, and leave early. This extends even to nonentities like the tennis team. They signed some autographs at Yost earlier this season and then watched a portion of the second period in seats directly behind mine, then took off.

Denard went to the DEATH TO BACKBOARDS Wisconsin game. He wasn't there with teammates (unless Drew Dileo was there—everyone around him was an average-sized white guy), stayed for the whole thing, and when handed a random maize T-shirt he put it over his futuristic Annie Lennox jacket. You can throw that on the pile of evidence that contains every press conference he's ever attended and every touchdown he's ever kneeled after.

But the larger point is good. Michigan swung away from its baseline attitude in the aftermath of the '89 championship because it won a lot for a brief period of time, and then when it won less and got the program in trouble they reacted by hiring Tommy Amaker and John Beilein. Even more telling was only after Amaker left for Harvard that people started complaining about his recruiting practices.

A lot of people have pointed at that reaction as the Fab Five's doing, but it's really just Michigan returning to its equilibrium state after being knocked out of it briefly. The same thing happened with Rodriguez except it didn't take nearly as long because there weren't any of those win things. At some point in the future Michigan will have a coach with a different idea of what football looks like*, and he'll be tolerated as long as he wins, and then eventually he won't win and Michigan will return to its equilibrium state.